The England cricket team's newest member, Darren Pattinson, must have been thrilled when, just last week, he got the phone call it felt like he'd been waiting all his life for: "The sofa you ordered is now in stock - when would you like it delivered?" And the day kept getting better when someone else rang up and asked him to play for the national side. Pausing only to ask "Which country and which sport?" and to rearrange delivery of the sofa - the fifth day of the Test should be safe, he thought - he rushed out of the house eager to meet his team-mates, who were some interesting people from another country.

Poor man, it's not his fault. If, say, the Sri Lankan selectors rang me up and asked if I fancied turning my arm over, I'd be sorely tempted - but I think I'd probably check it wasn't an administrative error. And that's what Pattinson's selection smacks of. Is his mobile number just one digit different from Matthew Hoggard's? It must be something like that. In a way they're lucky they got someone who, it turned out, had played a bit of cricket.

And I think we should go easy on that sort of cock-up. It happens to us all: I was once filming a comedy show which also required a child actor, and the director had, rather shamefacedly, to admit to the producer and me that he'd got the kids' names mixed up after the auditions and booked the crap one by mistake. But of course we were far too nice to say that to the child, and we just coped. So I think it reflects very well on the England selectors and team that they similarly took the mistake politely in their stride.

No - no blame can be attached to anyone over this unfortunate episode unless you listen to those conspiracy theorists who would have us believe that Pattinson was picked deliberately. This is almost unthinkable as it implies a confluence of cynicism and incompetence unprecedented even in the grisly annals of England selection policy. To act by the letter rather than the spirit of the national eligibility rules is understandable where brilliant players are concerned, but to do so for a roof-tiler who's a keen cricketer in his spare time seems very unlikely. To overlook tried and tested bowlers for a newcomer who's only played 11 first-class games would make sense if he were a 19-year-old hope for the future, but when it happens to someone who's 29, then it's definitely just an admin screw-up which we can all have a good laugh about. I'd be amazed if the gentlemanly South Africans don't come to that conclusion some time this week and insist on declaring the match a draw.

To be fair, on the fourth day, Pattinson took part in one of the aspects of Test cricket that I most enjoy: the spectacle of bowlers trying to bat. It is part of the game's genius that it involves this It's a Knockout/Generation Game fish-out-of-water element. At the highest point of stress and consequence in a major international sporting contest, victory or defeat can often depend on whether a couple of bowlers can score a few more runs, or block for just another hour (although in the case of the last Test, it would have had to be another day). It's like the climax of a movie: the everyman hero has to take down the professional villains - Angus Fraser must face another delivery from Allan Donald! Only Steve Harmison can score the runs England so desperately need! Will the ball manage to connect with the massive swing of the bat that Devon Malcolm is going to do anyway!?

And there was a good display of bowlers batting on Monday. James Anderson batted well in the morning before being hit on the head, and Stuart Broad and Pattinson delayed the inevitable in the afternoon, with some brilliant strokes in the case of the former. The runs meant more, and the excitement was heightened, by the fact that they weren't doing what they're best at, they were struggling against the odds, and would almost certainly rather have been bowling. Or tiling a roof.

More sports should be structured in a way that requires, even at the highest level, people trying to succeed at something they're not particularly good at. That's when you see someone's true colours: their ability to improvise and capacity to endure pain.

The Tour de France has this. A specialist sprinter like Mark Cavendish is utterly exposed in the mountain-climbing stages but he struggled through some of them in order to stay in the Tour for the next sprint. It's facing this kind of adversity that makes sportspeople admirable. The day after Cavendish finished dead last, he became the first Briton to win a third stage in a single Tour.

So here's to more sporting fish-out-of-water everymen facing desperate odds - although that shouldn't be taken as encouragement to the England selectors to play another round of mobile phone roulette. It's fun to watch a non-specialist batsman bat, but less so when he's also a non-specialist cricketer.